New Obamacare Numbers Released

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By By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

Posted:
01/13/2014 4:01 pm EST
Updated:
03/15/2014 5:59 am EDT

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), removes her eyeglasses during a Senate Finance Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, the lead architect of Obamacare in the Senate said the U.S. health secretary needs to stay at the helm to repair the insurance exchanges and must 'meet, and I'd prefer you beat' an end-of-the-month deadline for the fixes. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty | Bloomberg via Getty Images

WASHINGTON (AP) — Younger people went for President Barack Obama at election time, but will they buy his health insurance?

New government figures show it's an older, costlier crowd that's signing up so far for health insurance under Obama's health care law. Enrollments are lower for the healthy, younger Americans who will be needed to keep premiums from rising.

Young adults from 18 to 34 are only 24 percent of total enrollment, the administration said Monday in its first signup figures broken down for age, gender and other details.

With the HealthCare.gov website now working, the figures cover the more than 2 million Americans who had signed up for government-subsidized private insurance through the end of December in new federal and state markets.

Enrolling young and healthy people is important because they generally pay more into the system than they take out, subsidizing older adults. While 24 percent is not a bad start, say independent experts, it should be closer to 40 percent to help keep premiums down.

Adults ages 55-64 were the most heavily represented in the signups, accounting for 33 percent of the total. Overall, the premiums paid by people in that demographic don't fully cover their medical expenses. Some are in the waiting room for Medicare; that coverage starts at age 65.

The administration and its allies remain confident they'll be able to get young adults interested. Many experts expected older, sicker people to be more heavily represented in the early numbers. Younger people might procrastinate, waiting until the March 31 enrollment deadline is near, weighing whether they want to risk tax penalties for remaining uninsured.

"The dynamic of younger people is that they are going to get educated, they are going to get informed, and they are going to enroll as we get closer to that deadline," said Aaron Smith, founder of Young Invincibles, an advocacy group for young adults.

Insurers, nonprofit groups and advocates are moving ahead with marketing campaigns that were put on hold when the federal website that serves 36 states was struggling.

Administration officials said that in the coming weeks they plan to increase outreach to young people in 25 communities located in states served by the federal website. That effort includes a national youth enrollment day on Feb. 15 and targeted outreach by sororities and fraternities, as well as Voto Latino, which focuses on Hispanic youth.

But even if the age mix remains tilted toward older adults, "it's nothing of the sort that would trigger instability in the system," said Larry Levitt, an insurance expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Premiums would go up next year for the overhaul, along with taxpayer costs per enrollee, but not enough to push the system into a "death spiral" in which rising premiums discourage healthy people from signing up.

Still, he said, "it underscores a need to heighten outreach efforts to young people."

Considering that the federal health care website was down most of the time in October, administration officials said they were pleased that the percentage of young adults was as high as it was.

"We think that more and more young people are going to sign up as time goes by," said Gary Cohen, head of the Health and Human Services Department's office in charge of Obama's push to cover the uninsured.

With Monday's numbers, a fuller picture has started to emerge of who's signing up.

Some of the highlights:

— The administration continues to play catch-up. Originally, officials hoped to sign up more than 3.3 million people through the end of 2013, nearly halfway to the goal of 7 million enrollments by the end of March. Instead, enrollment as of Dec. 31 was not quite 2.2 million.

— Fifty-four percent of those who signed up were women, a slightly higher proportion of females than in the population.

— Nearly four out of five who signed up got financial help with their premiums.

— The most popular coverage option was a so-called silver plan, which covers about 70 percent of expected medical costs. Three out of five people picked silver. One in five picked a lower-cost bronze plan. Only 13 percent picked gold, which most closely compares to the typical employer plan. Another 7 percent went for top-tier platinum plans, and about 1 percent picked skimpy "catastrophic" plans available only to certain groups of people, including those under 30.

— A few states accounted for a huge share of the enrollment. California alone had 23 percent of the signups. California, New York, Florida, Texas and North Carolina accounted for nearly half the total.

Some questions remained unanswered. For example, the administration is unable to say how of many of those enrolling for coverage had been previously uninsured. Some might have been among the more than 4.7 million insured people whose previous policies were canceled because they didn't meet the law's standards.

In Miami, 19-year-old college student Stacy Sylvain was one of the last-minute online signups as 2013 drew to a close. In about an hour, the part-time waitress signed up for a plan with a $158 monthly premium, with the feds kicking in $48. She has a $2,500 deductible. Sylvain said she had no trouble navigating the website.

"Many people have a preconceived notion that young people are healthy and don't need to go to the doctor," said Sylvain, who suffered a minor injury when she fell and hit her head during an indoor soccer class in 2012. "Not having to worry about being uninsured and the what-ifs has made an incredible impact on my life."

Peter Bensen, McDonald's chief financial officer, said on a conference call last year that Obamacare will cost the company and its franchisees $140 million to $420 million per year.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, told NPR in January that Obamacare is "like fascism." He then told HuffPost Live that he regretted making that comparison.
(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John's, said in August that Obamacare will cost the company $0.11 to $0.14 per pizza. But he has maintained that Papa John's offers and will continue to offer health insurance to all of its employees.
(Photo by Diane Bondareff/Invision for Papa John's International/AP Images)

David Overton, CEO of the Cheesecake Factory, told CBS in December that Obamacare "will be very costly" and "most people will have to [raise prices] or cheapen their product" in response.
Dina Barmasse-Gray, the Cheesecake Factory's senior vice president of human resources, said in a statement to The Huffington Post: "We have the highest regard for the wellbeing of our staff members, and have offered health insurance to our staff members who work at least 25 hours per week for many years. Because of our long history of providing health benefits, and based on our current analysis of the new requirements, we do not believe the Affordable Health Care Act will have a material impact on us."

Boeing lobbied unsuccessfully against a new Obamacare fee, according to the Wall Street Journal. And it is generally concerned about Obamacare's costs.
"Boeing agrees with the intent of the Affordability Care Act – to provide increased access to coverage, to improve quality, and in the long run, to help manage the overall cost of the health care system," Boeing spokesman Joseph Tedino said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post in March. "However, while the details and implications of the ACA continue to emerge, the net financial impact to Boeing since the inception of law and for the foreseeable future is negative."
(Photo by Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)

Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE, told Bloomberg Businessweek last year that he plans to respond to Obamacare by selling cheaper meats and hiring more part-time workers. He also told Newsmax he plans to build fewer restaurants in response.
(Photo by Erik S. Lesser/Getty Images)

Jimmy John's CEO Jimmy John Liautaud told Fox News last year that he plans to cut his workers' hours in order to avoid having to offer them health insurance under Obamacare. "We have to bring them down to 28 hours [per week]," he said. "There's no other way we can survive it."